The ony thing wrong with Trials and Tribble-ations

[Dale Sams]

It was only Bashir and O'Brien who definitely didn't know about the Klingons.

A drastic change of Klingon's morphology somewhere before TMP era would have been:
1- A pretty notorious fact, more notorious that uniform's color code.
2- Deeply investigated by the Federation.
3- At least mentioned in a little box in Bashir's medecine books about Klingon.

Pshhh....medicine books about Klingons? Crusher seems completely unaware about the redundancies in Worf's system....and he's a crew member!

 

[Timewalker]

With a better build-up there could have been actual tension that they might disrupt the timeline that wasn't actually relieved until O'Brien and Bashir get out of Kirk's dressing down of his officers. Instead, it wasn't really a trial or a tribulation; rather, the whole thing was simply farcical.

At some point just after the end of the show, Kirk should have realized he had acquired four new crewmembers who appeared out of nowhere - not even transferred from anywhere - and they just as mysteriously vanished. And somewhere, Marlena Moreau would not be on the Enterprise.

 

[Armored Saint]

I imagine the strange situation when Lieutenant Watley arrived to sickbay and found an old southern doctor instead of Bashir.

Pshhh....medicine books about Klingons? Crusher seems completely unaware about the redundancies in Worf's system....and he's a crew member!

Worf ate the book...or it's only a small booklet.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

With a better build-up there could have been actual tension that they might disrupt the timeline that wasn't actually relieved until O'Brien and Bashir get out of Kirk's dressing down of his officers. Instead, it wasn't really a trial or a tribulation; rather, the whole thing was simply farcical.

At some point just after the end of the show, Kirk should have realized he had acquired four new crewmembers who appeared out of nowhere - not even transferred from anywhere - and they just as mysteriously vanished. And somewhere, Marlena Moreau would not be on the Enterprise.

I'm aware of how the scene was created, and as crazy as I thought it was for Sisko to get Kirk's autograph, I don't see how it has any bearing in-universe on Marlena Moreau. If one is going to argue butterfly effect, the ripples could easily affect just about anyone, why Moreau in particular?

 

[Christopher]

I imagine the strange situation when Lieutenant Watley arrived to sickbay and found an old southern doctor instead of Bashir.

Logically they should have more than one doctor on staff, so that someone's available for all shifts. We know M'Benga was on staff as a junior physician, and he may not have been the only one. So Watley wouldn't have been surprised that there was more than one doctor on the ship, though she would've been puzzled that nobody knew about Bashir.

 

[DonIago]

Great, now I'm thinking how ironic it would be if the repercussions of this episode's events were actually responsible for the formation of the DTI that pesters Our Heroes in the future/present.

 

[Christopher]

Great, now I'm thinking how ironic it would be if the repercussions of this episode's events were actually responsible for the formation of the DTI that pesters Our Heroes in the future/present.

I already wrote a book about the origins of the DTI, Forgotten History. I posited that it was more a response to Starfleet's early reckless experimentation with time travel for historical research in "Assignment: Earth" and "Yesteryear." I don't think any of the contemporary observers of the K-7 tribble incident were aware there was any temporal interference involved.

 

[DonIago]

I read the book. Enjoyed it too, though I think I preferred the earlier one.

Perhaps there's an alternate timeline with a DTI that formed after Our Heroes' temporal interference was detected.

 

[scotpens]

Yeah, I took it as a joke and I thought it was brilliant. Really the whole episode was a lighthearted gem. I think the beginning set the tone. It was a valentine (in the TRUE sense of the word) for the fans.

I love how the agents for the Department of Temporal Investigations were played as a couple of stuffy, humorless, by-the-book bureaucrats -- with the wink-wink names of Dulmer and Lucsly.

 

[Christopher]

I love how the agents for the Department of Temporal Investigations were played as a couple of stuffy, humorless, by-the-book bureaucrats -- with the wink-wink names of Dulmer and Lucsly.

For some reason it was actually spelled Dulmur in the script. That's the spelling I've used in my books, mainly because it's the official spelling, but also to avoid the X-Files comparison -- since the characters really bear no resemblance to Mulder and Scully beyond the names, and if anything are more like Joe Friday (Lucsly) and Bill Gannon (Dulmur).

What I've had fun with in my DTI books is keeping Lucsly and Dulmur as stuffy, humorless, by-the-book bureaucrats... and making it a virtue.

 

[Maurice]

I thought the same as Maurice first run.

The evident presumption by the DS9 writers was that we'd rather watch the DS9 characters blabber like idiots about irrelevances such as which one's Kirk during an elided build-up, than have them pipe down and listen, mostly in stunned silence as they all come to realize that they're about to get sucked into a bar fight...

Nah, because it's not entirely from the DS9 cast's POV because it keep bits of "funny" business like Chekov repeatedly ineffectually punching the Klingon, which are clearly of a different tone.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I thought the same as Maurice first run.

The evident presumption by the DS9 writers was that we'd rather watch the DS9 characters blabber like idiots about irrelevances such as which one's Kirk during an elided build-up, than have them pipe down and listen, mostly in stunned silence as they all come to realize that they're about to get sucked into a bar fight...

Nah, because it's not entirely from the DS9 cast's POV because it keep bits of "funny" business like Chekov repeatedly ineffectually punching the Klingon, which are clearly of a different tone.

In any case, them getting confused about which one Kirk was both was unfunny and annoyingly wasted what were evidently precious screen seconds.

 

[Christopher]

In any case, them getting confused about which one Kirk was both was unfunny and annoyingly wasted what were evidently precious screen seconds.

It was an in-joke, since the character that O'Brien mistook for Kirk, Lt. Freeman, was played by Shatner's stand-in/stunt double Paul Baxley.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

In any case, them getting confused about which one Kirk was both was unfunny and annoyingly wasted what were evidently precious screen seconds.

It was an in-joke, since the character that O'Brien mistook for Kirk, Lt. Freeman, was played by Shatner's stand-in/stunt double Paul Baxley.

Thanks for the info, which I didn't know. In retrospect, I probably should have guessed it was something like that.

I don't feel bad for not getting it, because TV Tropes reassures me that, as a private in-joke that needed to be explained, it was already a dead joke.

"If you have to explain a joke, there is no joke!" — The Joker

 

[F. King Daniel]

I once read a rather intense rant complaining about everything from the sound effects to the opacity of the turbolift... uhhh... deck passing indicator thingy (does it have a name?) to Sisko's bright yellow shirt to the blinking coloured squares on Sisko's Enterprise panel being the wrong ones for the console he was meant to be at. The only one I ever noticed was the shirt colour being wrong - although I wonder if that was actually the lighting?

In any case, them getting confused about which one Kirk was both was unfunny and annoyingly wasted what were evidently precious screen seconds.

It was an in-joke, since the character that O'Brien mistook for Kirk, Lt. Freeman, was played by Shatner's stand-in/stunt double Paul Baxley.

And hilariously, James Cawley supposedly managed to do the exact same thing IRL with Zachary Quinto's stand-in on the set of ST'09.